- What is Accreditation?
The accreditation process is also known in terms of its ability to effectively drive student performance and continuous improvement in education. But such definitions, though accurate, are incomplete.
While accreditation is a set of rigorous protocols and research-based processes for evaluating an institution’s organizational effectiveness, it is far more than that. Today accreditation examines the whole institution—the programs, the cultural context, the community of stakeholders—to determine how well the parts work together to meet the needs of students.
- Cognia Accreditation Domains
The new Standards, varying in number based on institution type, are organized under three Domains:
1 Leadership Capacity
2 Learning Capacity
3 Resource Capacity
The Domains are statements that define the capacity of an organization or institution to provide quality and meet the rigorous demands of continuous improvement. Each Domain is further defined by Standards, which in turn, are defined by Performance Rubrics.
The AdvancED Performance Standards are research-based statements that describe conditions that are necessary for institutions to support organizational effectiveness and improve student performance.
In addition to the Domains and accompanying Standards, two Performance Rubrics also are aligned to the Standards to help provide measurable progress and an overall assessment of practices. The Rubrics act as a diagnostic tool, each consisting of four performance levels, that contain evaluative criteria related to concepts contained within the Standard statement.
Collectively, the elements of the AdvancED Performance Standards serve as a road map for the continuous improvement process for institutions and as the foundation of the accreditation process used by AdvancED Review Teams to provide relevant and quality feedback on how institutions are serving the learner.
Participating in External Review Teams with AdvancED Organization ,Preparing schools for accreditation in addition to attending many international conferences held by the organization gave me a tremendous experience in this field.
